World of Warcraft

On February 17th, 1980, around 10PM, I was so frustrated with some puzzles in Dungeon (which would later become Infocom’s flagship game, Zork), that I found out where on the University of New Hampshire’s engineering school’s VAX-11/780 the game was installed, and printed out all the text in the game, hoping that would give me some CLUE to the devilish puzzles. I still have that printout, covered with my scrawled notations and maps. Why I’ve kept that printout over twenty-nine years – longer than many of my friends have been alive – I don’t really know, but there it is. I look at those words and remember nights spent in the lab learning about programming sound, graphics, user interfaces and compilers, but late at night after all the homework was done, trying to solve yet another puzzle in Dungeon. ...

In 2007, you could have surprised absolutely nobody by predicting that 2008, last year, would be the biggest, best year ever for MMOs. Triple A titles abounded – Age of Conan and Warhammer Online were both just going to tear WoW a new one, but heck, even WoW was coming out with its second expansion. Pirates of the Burning Sea would take MMOs into a new direction, Chronicles of Spellborn would be an indie hit from Europe, and Flagship would be following up Hellgate: London with their MMO homage to Diablo II, Mythos. ...

2008 has been an absolutely amazing year for MMOs, and my personal progress through them. Last year at this time, I’d just found the absolutely most perfect EQ2 guild – they were great raiders, loved grouping, and were fantastic people besides. With Clan of Shadows, I managed to do every flagging raid for Ruins of Kunark and was ready to step in and do my best to help the guild as they conquered Veeshan’s Peak. It wasn’t to be; I didn’t make the full membership vote. It wasn’t even close. That disappointment, along with other things to fill my evenings, eventually led to the end of raiding. Without raiding, though, I didn’t have much incentive to log in anymore. I tried to make things work with another guild, Delusions of Grandeur, but it just wasn’t CoS. I guess if I couldn’t make it in CoS, I didn’t want to settle for a lesser guild. ...

World of Warcraft is a name of power. It summons spam blogscrapers from the mist-filled depths where they lurk, waiting for someone of the mortal world to summon them forth. World of Warcraft. Their noses twitch, their ghastly bone spines quiver, the hunt begins. I feel most sorry for the WoW bloggers who have to deal with them every hour of every day.

If eBay closed tomorrow, thousands of small businesses that use the auction site for their virtual storefronts would be devastated. eBay has long since stopped being primarily the world’s biggest yard sale, and now funnels an amazing number of gray market and handmade goods all over the world. Similarly, as the nation’s game of record, World of Warcraft has long since stopped being “just” a game. There’s huge money in providing services to World of Warcraft players. We gamers have MONEY. We want to spend it on our game but Blizzard only lets us spend $15/mo, aside from the occasional BlizzCon. ...

I went off to Amazon.com to pre-order The Shadow Odyssey so I could get that cool dire bear pet/mount (which will be claimed by Ettie, my 46 defiler), and halfway down the page, Amazon told me that people who pre-ordered the EQ2 expansion frequently pre-ordered Wrath of the Lich King at the same time. I wonder how many people play both games? I should be getting a free digital download of the expansion on my main account, since I went to Fan Faire and have gotten the Fan Faire cloak, so I’m in the system even though I attended on a press pass. I wasn’t sure about that. ...

Photoshop stitched together four screenshots to make this, automatically. Pretty neat! No, it’s true. We went to the Plane of Time tonight. Once upon a ’time’ (sorry), that meant you had completed all the raids in Planes of Power – lessee if I can remember them – Terris Thule & Saryrn, Grummus & Carprin & Bertoxxulous, the Manaetic Behemoth, any trial in the Plane of Justice (didn’t have to kill Seventh Hammer, though), Aerin’Dar & three Halls of Honor trials & Mithaniel Marr & Agnarr, Vallon Zek & Tallon Zek & Rallos Zek the Warlord, Solusek Ro, that alligator in Plane of Earth, and then the Elemental gods – Fennin Ro, Coirnav (entire raid – 14 minutes or you fail for three days), The Rathe Council (12 raid mobs – six mezzable, six not – need to die within 8 minutes of each other, IIRC), and Xegony (google ‘xegony boobie taunt’). After doing all that – and how many times for each raid before all of 72+ people were flagged? – you could zone in to the Plane of Time. ...

Maracas aren’t as good at warding off intergalactic invaders as I thought they would be. While out gathering the day’s meals, my duckling tribespeople were startled by a huge contraption which WALKED on white, clanking legs down from the sky and sucked up the food animals that were being kept in the pen behind the main hut. It then buzzed the village twice and stalked back up into space. ...

Hey, welcome back to the second in our exclusive series about the exciting innovative gameplay of Mythic’s Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning. Public quests, open groups, the excitement of the Tome of Knowledge, all things never seen before the evil geniuses at Mythic brewed them up in charmed cauldrons on some fog-shrouded Scottish moor, with the witch-goddess Hecate shrieking over it. It’s a well-known fact that the color red in the game packaging is made from blood. ...

Warhammer Online. Warhammer. WAR. WAAAAGH. All ways to describe the game sweeping our interwebs in ways Google can easily find. More? Public quests? This game has public quests. Tome of Knowledge? This is the ONLY GAME with a Tome of Knowledge. World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King, coming this November, does not have public quests OR a Tome of Knowledge. Order. Destruction. War everywhere becomes WAR everywhere. Public quests and the Tome of Knowledge and Order and Destruction and Realm vs Realm – things every game, such as Blizzard’s World of Warcraft, and its upcoming Wrath of the Lich King expansion, will soon have in abundance. Soon, EA Mythic’s Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning will no longer be able to call public quests, and the Tome of Knowledge, something exclusive only to WAR. ...